Faculty Profiles

Mark S. Karlan

Mark Karlan will teach Real Estate Transactions at UCLA School of Law. He is a Continuing Lecturer in Finance at UCLA Anderson School of Management where he has taught Real Estate Finance and Investments to over 2,500 students since 2012. He was also a faculty advisor in the Anderson School’s Applied Management Research field study program at UCLA where he advised the 2014/2015 AMR team that won the Deloitte Consulting Award.

Karlan has 36 years of experience in the commercial real estate finance and investment business. He is currently the President and CEO of American Medical Properties and serves on the Board of Directors of Garden Remedies Inc., one of the leading vertically integrated cannabis companies in Massachusetts. Karlan was an Executive Managing Director of CBRE Global Investors from 2006 through 2011 where he was a member of the firm's global Executive Committee and regional Investment Committees. He was the President and founder of the firm's Strategic Partners Asia II fund, a value-added real estate fund with $1.2 billion of assets that was one of the top performing funds of its vintage with offices in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Tokyo and Singapore.

Previously, Karlan was the President and CEO, founder and a member of the Board of Directors of Imperial Credit Commercial Mortgage Investment Corp., a NASDAQ listed REIT that invested in both commercial real estate and commercial mortgage loans in the U.S. and Europe. Imperial Credit Commercial was the top performing mortgage REIT from the time of its 1997 initial public offering that raised more than $500 million of equity capital through the date of its sale to another public company in 2000.

Karlan began his career at JMB Realty Corp. in Chicago in 1985 where he was a Senior Vice President and partner and led the acquisition of the Cadillac Fairview Company, one of the largest real estate firms in North America. Karlan has acquired and financed more than 1,000 commercial properties and commercial mortgage loans globally with a gross asset value exceeding $10 billion on behalf of institutional and other investors.

Karlan graduated with honors from Harvard Law School, Harvard Business School and Harvard College, received a John Harvard Scholarship for academic achievement of the highest distinction and was a winner of the Williston contract negotiation competition. Karlan is a featured speaker at institutional and private equity conferences. He is a member of the California State Bar and is a California licensed real estate broker.